It’s 9 am on a Sunday morning. I frequent my usual cafe for breakfast. This morning, I felt risky, so I bought myself a cold brew and breakfast. I lock eyes with a man while I eat. Catch him in the act of letting his eyes wander from the woman across from him, and I wonder if he means to implicate himself or if it is an honest mistake. You can usually tell by how greedy they look. Clock the emptiness in their eyes. Whites that don’t look full, the way their mouth goes slightly ajar- like a kid caught taking an extra cookie. In my hyper-aware, hyper-attentive state, nothing slips past me. The sensory experience is akin to an open burn; my whole body goes allodynic. And numb it as much as I like; once I am seen, it feels like I can never, ever disappear again. Sometimes, I feel like men look at me and see the lack in themselves. Then again, I project. I look at others and see lack everywhere. I love a sunny day; it is an instant excuse to hide behind my sunglasses and let my eyes wander as shamelessly as I want. I love looking. I love it sometimes when they look back.
I am one hour too early to get my groceries; I’ve locked eyes with at least five men now. There are only two types of people- those who can keep eye contact and those who cannot. I don’t understand why women don’t stare back. Why is it so easy for us to hang out our heads and accept the weight of their eyes? And in the same vein, why is it that when we do look, we are ashamed of doing so? Eye contact is threatening. There is a thin veil that lies between the eyes and the first words out of your mouth. Your five senses are constantly sparking, but sight is the defining blow that births desire and gives it shape. There are two types of people- those who look and form desire and those who sense desire and look back. Get mixed into the crowd and see that it is an unspoken landscape of basic instinctual behaviours: a dance of eyes, closed mouths and tight throats. Thoughts and thoughts and more thoughts. Our eyes leak out these ugly animal drives—a quick glance can tell you everything.
Sometimes, I feel like I stay inside too much. Being out becomes foreign. I can’t remember the last time I dressed up with the intention of being perceived. At times, I feel like love is the great cage I lock myself in. In this way, it has saved me from being too open to the blazing gaze of the world. In this case, a part of my commitment is to conceal myself. Become the gift—as if to say, you may have me in a way no one else ever will. This exclusivity makes my love priceless. But it fragments my entire existence. I am a shadow of myself in all realms but one: when I am committed to love. There are problems with this, but I love my exclusivity enough to keep at it. I am addicted to feeling untouchable. All my connections are intentional, and all my interactions are pre-thought and exacted with extreme control. There are problems with this, but I am too in love with my inaccessibility to care.
In history, the notion of sight and control of it permeates religion.
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If, therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.1
“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a musty cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!2
“Belief in the evil eye is ancient and ubiquitous; it occurred in ancient Greece and Rome, in Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions, and in indigenous, peasant, and other folk societies, and it has persisted throughout the world into modern times.”3
For millennia, we have been aware of how sight births desire, yet we are powerless against its mechanisms. There is no confrontation of it, just the quiet sweeping of desire under the rug. We are right to disregard the barrage of input we are hounded with these days, but what about taking more action to kill it at its root? In the beginning, it will be hard to part with this mechanism. The sight’s ability to hijack our concentration is rooted within our very biology:
The brain is limited in its capacity to process all sensory stimuli present in the physical world at any point in time and relies instead on the cognitive process of attention to focus neural resources according to the contingencies of the moment. Attention can be categorized into two distinct functions: bottom-up attention, referring to attentional guidance purely by externally driven factors to stimuli that are salient because of their inherent properties relative to the background, and top-down attention, referring to internal guidance of attention based on prior knowledge, willful plans, and current goals4
In this way, I wonder if surveillance is something I have been trained to do. Had I never felt a gaze on me, would I have been so good at gazing back? And what of looking my observers right in the eye?—At times, I still feel the risk of it slipping past me like a curtain. I am better at it now, but ultimately, I cannot go on unperceived. Perhaps I am too occlusive; there are ways around this struggle, and during my search for answers, I stumble onto some interesting ground.
Pratītyasamutpāda (Sanskrit: प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, Pāli: paṭiccasamuppāda), commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key doctrine in Buddhism.5
It states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "If this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist” The basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things.
The doctrine depicts the arising of suffering when we follow along ‘with the grain’ of motivations caused by our nature (Nidānas) and how the chain can be reversed by going ‘against the grain'.
There are 12 Nidānas- each giving rise to the next.
Avidyā - ignorance or misconceptions about the nature of metaphysical reality, in particular about the impermanence.
Saṅkhāra - subconscious fabrications of the body, mind and dialogue that occur within us.
Viññāṇa - consciousness and discernment — there are six types of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, intellect (or mind) consciousness
Nāmarūpa - the existence of name and form, mentality and corporeality, body and mind.
Saḷāyatana - proprioception, the six base senses: the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. 6
Phassa - the impression of touch, nociception—the act of thoughts influencing one’s being, being ‘touched’ by a feeling or action.
Vedanā -"feeling" or "sensation."— refers to the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations that occur when our internal sense organs come into contact with external sense objects and the associated consciousness.
Taṇhā - thirst, desire, longing, greed, either physical or mental7—typically translated as craving8, and is of three types: kāma-taṇhā (craving for sensual pleasures), bhava-taṇhā (craving for existence), and vibhava-taṇhā (craving for non-existence.)9
Upādāna - the act of clinging and attachment to Taṇhā. There are four main types: clinging to sensuality (kama), clinging to views (ditthi), clinging to ethics and vows (silabbata, "precept and practice"), and clinging to a self-view (atta vada)."
Bhava - Existence, Becoming, continuation and embodiment of attachments; existing in the falsehood of sensuality, perspective, ethics and the self.
Jāti - Physical birth; to rebirth, the arising of a new living entity within saṃsāra (cyclic existence); and also to the arising of mental phenomena (new self-identity/self-view and complexes)
Jarāmaraṇa - The eventual decay of the self leading to death-physical, mental and spiritual.”
"Whatever deceasing, passing away, breaking up, disappearance, dying, death, completion of time, break up of the aggregates, casting off of the body, interruption in the life faculty of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called death.”10
In Buddhism, it is believed that this cycle perpetuates the larger cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra). It describes the process of a sentient being's rebirth in saṃsāra and the resultant duḥkha (suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness)11—
The reversal of the causal chain is explained as leading to the cessation of rebirth (and, thus, the cessation of suffering).12
Understanding this cycle may illuminate the perpetual cycle of perceiving and being perceived. We may not be able to understand straight away the fabrications that birth our actions. However, through observations, some patterns may begin to appear. I also spoke about this in my article about fear, during my discussion with a friend. We can surely see the moment an emotion touches our mind. And from there, we can choose not to regard it.
I can feel a million gazes upon me and choose still to walk on.
-swan
Matthew 6:22 NKJV
Matthew 6:22-23
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "evil eye". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/evil-eye. Accessed 19 May 2024.
Katsuki F, Constantinidis C. Bottom-Up and Top-Down Attention: Different Processes and Overlapping Neural Systems. The Neuroscientist. 2014;20(5):509-521. doi:10.1177/1073858413514136
Boisvert, Mathieu (1995), The Five Aggregates: Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, ISBN 978-0-88920-257-3 - The Pratītyasamutpāda doctrine, states Mathieu Boisvert, is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism and it may be considered as "the common denominator of all the Buddhist traditions throughout the world, whether Theravada, Mahayana or Vajrayana".
This is not to be confused with Viññāṇa, as it seems to be considered a completely different field. Saḷāyatana alludes to the solidified belief that input from all 6 senses is real. There is an attachment and reliance on these senses as a means to function. Viññāṇa alludes more to the true nature of these senses—that they can be belied and thus need discernment.
Thomas William Rhys Davids; William Stede (1921). Pali-English Dictionary. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 294. ISBN 978-81-208-1144-7.
Richard Gombrich; Gananath Obeyesekere (1988). Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 246. ISBN 978-81-208-0702-0.
Paul Williams; Anthony Tribe; Alexander Wynne (2002). Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. Routledge. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-1-134-62324-2.
"Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of Dependent Co-arising". Access to Insight (BCBS Edition). Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. 30 November 2013. (SN 12.2).
Harvey, Peter (2015), "The Conditioned Co-arising of Mental and Bodily Processes within Life and Between Lives", in Emmanuel, Steven M. (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-1-119-14466-3
Robert E. Buswell Jr.; Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2013). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press. p. 583. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8.
loved this!! I neglected the fact that I needed glasses for a while, and when I finally accepted it and wore them out in the world I noticed that a lot of the blurry blobs were people looking right at me. I’m still trying to teach myself to look back or look first😗
omg what an interesting read and i loved the diagrams too!! also i just read fast so dont think i skimmed :)